114 DVD-A / Moving Real Surround Sound

9 reviews for 114 DVD-A / Moving Real Surround Sound

1. Kundenzuschrift bei JPC – 8. June 2020

   When Peter Dances with the Wolf

   Narrator voices are not to everyone’s taste in these two works (Peter and the Wolf, Carnival of the Animals). The DVD version, running a total of 151 minutes (playable both as DVD-Audio and on any DVD-Video player), includes a German and an English narration. But the real highlight is the narration-free, purely musical version!

   These works, which long ago found their way even into pop music, are presented here in a fresh and varied manner. The musicians serve up no plushy schoolroom mush, but play with good humor while making great and playful use of space. In the multichannel version, Tacet doesn’t pour bland reverb “sauce” into the rear speakers, but rather transforms the home listening room into a 360° concert hall. Even small systems convey the fascination.

   Plenty of other multichannel productions could retreat in silence to their little chambers. It’s wonderful when music and technology harmonize so successfully and enrich one another. With this Moving Real Surround Sound demo, Tacet has created something exemplary.

   Da kann sich manch eine Mehrkanalproduktion der Multis ins stille Kämmerlein zurückziehen. Schön, wenn Musik und Technik so gelungen harmonisieren und sich gegenseitig bereichern. Tacet hat mit dieser "Moving Real Surround Sound" - Demo Beispielhaftes geschaffen.

   Friedrich Schumacher (published with kind permission of the author)

2. Jean-Marc’s Multi-Channel Recordings Reviews – 1. January 2009

   All the TACET recordings I have are for relatively small musical formations. I often wondered whether the same recording techniques that TACET use could be applied with similar success to larger formation up to a full orchestra. This recording proves that it is possible, and that the results can be as extraordinary as on other TACET recordings.

   As is usual for TACET (but so rare on other labels) this recording offers an excellent separation of the various instruments which means that all the musical lines are easy to hear at all time. For example, the lower strings may play in the back and the violins up front, accompanying woodwinds on the center channel. This way all musical cues are immediately perceptible. Sitting at the center of the listening room, all sounds from the loudspeakers blend nicely and there is not the impression to listen to individual loudspeakers, but to a continuous sound field that surround us completely.

   All the instruments are exquisitely reproduced with astonishing fidelity. For example, in the Carnival, in the movement "elephant" I never heard a double bass recorded in such a realistic way. The acoustic signature is enormous, larger than the limits of my own listening room.

   There is no LFE channel. The sound is really surround, one can turn around 90,180,270 degree and the sound level is equal on all side (of course when all speakers are used). When a single solo flute is playing all the sound energy may seem to come from a single point in the room.

   This recording uses a technique that TACET calls "Moving Real Surround Sound". It is the ability to move a sound across or around the listening space. For example, a scale at the piano may start at the back an move up to the front as if the piano was stretched, or a flute will jump from tree to tree across the room. These effects are amusing and perfectly suited to this kind of music. The effects are never overdone and the sound perspective remains realistic at all times.

   Jean-Marc Serre

3. Classical CD Review – 1. June 2004

   Tacet is an imaginative, relatively new company not afraid to experiment.
   Their concept of Real Surround Sound offers you a 360 degree perspective in which the music is heard discretely from all speakers instead of the usual surround sound that places performers in front usually only with ambient sound coming from the rear.

   There is no question that the "standard" engineering approach to recording surround sound is quite natural and convincing. However, in these recordings of Prokofiev and Saint-Saëns we have various instruments coming from specific speakers—and sometimes moving about. I find it highly effective indeed. It′s rather like sitting right in the middle of the orchestra—and the players are sometimes moving!

   Both of these stories for children are narrated by Bradley Cole, telling the stories as an old owl, in a rather mod versions by Christoph Ullrich. The owl also does a great deal of moving about. There′s nothing to view on the monitor screen except at the beginning when the listener can select the presentation in English or German, with another option of listening only to the music.

4. Audiophile Audition – 1. June 2004

   Tacet has been doing some creative things with surround in their classical DVD-A releases. They usually place the players in chamber music one to a speaker, so that with a quintet, for example, you are completely in the middle of the ensemble as though you were one of the performers.

   Their next step was Moving Real Surround, which as the name suggests involves pan-potting some of the musicians around during the music. (...)

   The oboe, second violin and trombone, for example, reside at the left frontal speaker. The percussion moves around as befits the story lines. A new script has been written for both works in which the owl is the storyteller.(...)

   There is more movement in the Carnival of the Animals, the most effective for me being the Swan swimming entirely around the listener. An interesting experiment in surround sound for certain.

   John Sunier

5. Stereo – 1. June 2004

   "A brilliant demonstration! The animals from Tchaikovsky’s "Peter and the Wolf" and Saint-Saëns' "Carnival of the Animals" come alive and move around the listener: the swan swims round in a circle, the elephant swings his trunk and the sparrow flutters from one corner to another. It is so fascinating you almost forget the excellent playing by the Polish Chamber Orchestra. […]" (stereo)
   tur

6. Enjoy the music – 1. May 2004

   (...) Tacet′s MOVING REAL SURROUND SOUND is said to make the players as well as the notes truly mobile, and enables the listener to "see" completely new things within the orbit of the loudspeakers. Listening becomes a new experience.

   Peter and the Wolf and the Carnival of the Animals are ideal vehicles to demonstrate this new aesthetic concept, which follows faithfully in the great recording tradition while fully exploiting the latest achievements and capabilities of the modern medium. (...)

   (…)
   Stephen R. Rochlin

7. Pizzicato – 1. May 2004

   Who else but an ancient owl could tell Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf and Camille Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals while in flight? And what other label but Tacet could actually let the owl fly all around us? Who else but Tacet could place the listener right in the middle of the action—say, with Prokofiev, right in the middle of the meadow, the house to the right, the forest at one’s back to the left, the fence up front on the left, the tree directly ahead, and the lake on the right, all within the soundscape. You see: what we have here is a delightfully crazy music production, in which not only the owl but also the music itself comes flying around our ears.
   A newly refashioned narration, a truly captivating storyteller in the German version (a more conventional one in the English), brilliantly performed music, and a sound engineer clearly enjoying himself at the mixing console all combine to make this CD an acoustic-musical experience of a very special kind: it is Moving Real Surround Sound!
   RéF

8. Crescendo – 1. March 2004

   Multichannel sound—done quite differently. More than once, recording engineer Andreas Spreer has literally set scores in motion with his Moving Real Surround Sound, presenting the instruments themselves in various configurations around the listener. With Peter and the Wolf and Carnival of the Animals, Spreer has now found ideal material for his idea. For the narrative element inherent in both works is here simultaneously demonstrated and intensified. The animals from Prokofiev’s and Saint-Saëns’ “stories” come alive and begin to move: the swan swims once around the listener, the elephant stands before him and swings its trunk, the bird flies from tree to tree. (…)
   KH

9. Enjoy the music – 5. July 2003

   Tacet has released their new DVD-Audio title Moving Real Surround Sound that features Sergei Prokofiev: Peter and the Wolf and Camille Saint-Saëns: Carnival of the Animals (DVD D114 or SACD S114).

   Performed by the Ladies Swing Quartet, Polish Chamber Orchestra as conducted by Wojciech Rajski, Tacet′s Moving Real Surround Sound is said to make "the players as well as the notes truly mobile, and enables the listener to "see" completely new things within the orbit of the loudspeakers. Listening becomes a new experience.

   Peter and the Wolf and the Carnival of the Animals are ideal vehicles to demonstrate this new aesthetic concept, which follows faithfully in the great recording tradition while fully exploiting the latest achievements and capabilities of the modern medium.

   This TACET DVD includes a complete English version (narrator: Bradley Cole), a German version (Moritz Stöpel) and a third performance with no narration at all.